Review Article

Review Article Studies in Fur It was appropriate that the lead article in the first number of Archivaria in 1975-76 was based on research in one of the most celebrated archival collections in the world.' In that article Arthur Ray pointed to the potential value of the business records of the Hudson's Bay Company, specifically to the Company's post account books and ledgers, as an illustration of the wealth of information contained in a largely neglected portion of a major archival source. Ray was pointing not only to the economic data that could be found in that source but also to the sociological and ecological information: the role of alcohol and tobacco in the trade; the type of furs brought in by the Indians; the number of deer and geese killed by the post's Indians; the identity and location of Indian groups; the Indian's buying habits. These aspects of the fur trade, he argued, would provide fruitful avenues of research. One area of research with which Ray has become identified is that of the nature of the economic contact between the European and the native. Considering the character of that relationship the terms "buying habits" and "economic contact", Ray suggests, are misnomers. Stimulated by Karl Polanyi's studies in the "non-market" contact between peoples, i.e. a situation in which the modern idea of "price" and "price mechanism" did not operate, students of the fur trade such as E.E. Rich, Abraham Rotstein, and Ray have reached different conclusions regarding the "economics" of the trade contact. On the basis of his studies in the Hudson's Bay Company Archives, E.E. Rich stated that in the early contact between the Company's personnel and the native people the Indian "did not react to the ordinary European notions of property nor to the nor- mal European motives". They did not understand such European concepts as supply and demand, costs of production, determination of price, profit motive. Within the Indian society, Rich argues, there persisted, "the idea of gift exchange", a ceremonial and social conta~t.~This same characteristic of "cross-cultural" trade is noted also by Rotstein who categorizes the trade contact between white and Indian as a form of treaty, or political and military alliance. To the Indian, "economic" life was not a separate and independent sphere of social existence. The European trader regarded economic transactions as an impersonal activity. The Indian viewed them as highly per- sonal - hence the ceremonial trade encounter, the pipe-smoking, the council, the gift- gi~ing.~ 1 Arthur J. Ray, "The Early Hudson's Bay Company Account Books as Sources for Historical Research : An Analysis and Assessment," Archivaria I (Winter 1975-76): 3-38. 2 E.E. Rich, "Trade Habits and Economic Motivation Among the Indians of North America," Canadian Journal of Economics and Polirical Science 26, No. 1 (February 1960): 35-53. 3 Abraham Rotstein, "Karl Polanyi's Concept of Non-Market-Trade", Journal of Economic History 30, No. 1 (March 1970): 117-126. 122 ARCHIVARIA This kind of association was a significant part of the relationship between the Huron Indians and the French in the early seventeenth century. Bruce Trigger, in his studies of the Huron people, notes that they had engaged with northern hunters in an exchange of corn for fish and meat long before the arrival of Europeans. Trade and trading contacts were reinforced by a complex set of accepted conventions. A particular trade route was recognized as the property of the tribe or family that had pioneered it. A trade "alliance" might involve an exchange of people, often children, as a gesture of friendship between the trade partners. At their first contact with the French, the Huron were hesi- tant about a trade relationship believing that there already existed a treaty-trade-alliance between the French and the Algonkin people, with whom the French were first in contact, and if violated would lead to Algonkin reprisals against them. The trade contact that was eventually made with the French embodied the kind of political and social obli- gations that had existed in the trade between Indian partners. Indian children were sent to the Jesuit Seminary at Quebec as a gesture of friendship and priests or coureur de bois living with the Huron were to be evidence of French goodwill. In the trade relationship the Huron guarded zealously their role as middlemen between the French and the interior peoples. They considered themselves a privleged people, and having a "treaty" with the French were entitled to protection from interlopers. The French soon realized that a trade relationship with the Huron required a "social" treaty. The Huron considered the trade relationship to involve a political and military alliance and the French were expected to join with the Huron as an allay in their war against the Iroquois. As to the Indian as an economic being, the French noted that the natives "scorned to haggle" over price and while they gave every sign of understanding market behaviour they did not openly express a profit motive. Economic activities were part of an elaborate social relationship between nations in which ceremony, gift-giving and exchange played an important role.4 Arthur Ray does not dispute the role of gift-giving or the social and ceremonial aspect in this exchange of goods. In Give us Good Measure, Ray and Donald Freeman, how- ever, dispute Rotstein's "politically motivated" concept of the fur trade.5 On the basis of their analysis of fur trade records they claim that the thesis of "subservience of economic motivation to political objectives" cannot be maintained. The Indians with whom the Hudson's Bay Company men were in contact did not consider themselves a "nation" as the Huron did. They never thought of the exchange of goods in terms of a political association. They traded "freely and simultaneously" with both English and French; they engaged in "shopping around"; they were guided in their choice of trading partners by "economic and not political considerations"; their behaviour was "not unlike that of any modern western consumer". The concept of "treaty trade", they argue was undoubtedly a factor in the Huronia and St. Lawrence trade but can not be extended to include the European and the native at Hudson Bay. By the nineteenth century, according to Rich, the Indian "revealed a completely European reaction to prices". In Rotstein's terms the fur trade for the Indian had become de-personalized. Further study might now be done in the fur trade records to clarify the process of economic Europeanization of the native beginning with the "primitive" concept of the economic motive noted by Ray and Freeman to determine what brought about the transformation. Was it the appearance of competition, the credit system, or the exchange of trade goods through Indian middlemen? In 1966, Dale Morgan, an American historian, rebuked fur trade specialists for their failure to consider the Indian's role in the fur trade.6 Some of the above studies of the 4 Bruce Trigger, The Huron, Farmers of the North (New York, 1969). 5 Arthur J. Ray and Donald Freeman, "Give Us Good Measure": An Economic Analysis of Relations between Indians and the Hudson's Bay Company before 1763 (Toronto, 1978) 6 Dale L. Morgan, "The Fur Trade and Its Historians", American West 3 (Spring 1966): 28-35. REVIEW ARTICLE 123 Indian as an economic being help to make amends for that failure. Calvin Martin, an American anthropologist, in an imaginative and controversial study, Keepers of the Game, treats the Indian as a hunter and as an economic being in terms of a cultural- religious background.' The fur trade, he argues, must be reconciled to the Indian's supernatural view of the world and his "belief-value" system. The major question he addresses is why the Indian whose existence depended on game, fish, and other sources of food in his environment could have engaged in exploitation of his world to the point of "overkill" through the fur trade. Why did he not recognize the damaging effects of his participation as a hunter in the trade? When presented with the opportunity of obtaining trade goods for furs he readily consummated the transaction. Part of Martin's answer is that exploitation of the environment did not take place before the arrival of the European because the Indian was handicapped by a rudimentary technology and had no incentive. He was by no means a conservationist but he was not a wasteful being in pre-historical times. Basing his explanation on legend, oral history, and fur trader accounts, Martin suggests that by the time of European contact the Indian's traditional belief system had been undermined. There should have been a "spiritual" obstacle to overkill but it was disregarded. Prior to contact, the deterrent to excessive hunting had been the fear of reprisal by the animal world. The Indian lived on amicable terms with the animals and their spirits or "keepers"; this courteous relationship precluded overkill. The Indian and the animal communicated freely with one another. They were parts of a mutually co-operative spiritual environment. The beaver was considered as a separate "nation" and treated according to specific ceremonies, rituals and taboos. The "keeper" of the beaver, or spiritual "controller", had to be propitiated so that he would continue to furnish game for the hunter. Through this spiritual realm the Indian was linked sympa- thetically with his physical and natural surroundings. Man and nature adhered to a pre- scribed behaviour based on mutual obligation.

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